[Gutenberg 37086] • The Dales of Arcady

The youngest Goddess sat in a corner of the Universe and sulked. For aeons, she had watched the older Goddesses play each in turn with the Earth-Ball, and every time the Ball passed her way, someone said, "She is too young, and, if she played with the Ball, might injure it." Another added, "Even our honourable Sister E-- created baleful Etna in her ardent desire to give a beauteous mountain to flowering Sicily, and C--, when she designed the azure Mediterranean, raised her little finger all too hurriedly, causing the whirlpool so dreaded by Grecian sailors." But the youngest Goddess had waited long and was becoming mutinous. Her great grey eyes, like silent moorland tarns fringed with shadowy larches, were fixed on the handiwork of the Goddess who at that moment held the Ball. She noticed the blue line thoughtfully traced across a vast tract of land, the line men call the River Amazon, and she watched the Designer proudly hold the Ball aloft to show her handiwork to her sisters. "Surely it is the finest river we have yet traced!" "Nay! let me see it."